Archive for the 'ACOG' Category

A field grade or staff officer has problems with his coming deployment to Afghanistan.  Is it related to the debacle that Afghanistan has become?  Or perhaps to the under-manning of the COPs, or if it’s N2K perhaps he knows that it’s a doomed mission?  Perhaps he is concerned over our teaming up with criminals like Hamid Karai and his brother Wali Karzai?  Maybe it’s our throwing enough cash around to corrupt most of the locals with whom we engage?  Or maybe he has a problem with the sorry rules of engagement, or the lack of a coherent strategy passed down from the top, or the horrible trend in green on blue attacks?

Nope.

When the so-called “Jesus rifle” came to light in Jan. 2010, it sparked constitutional and security concerns, and a maelstrom of media coverage. The Pentagon ordered the removal of the secret code referring to Bible passages that the manufacturer had inscribed on the scopes of the standard issue rifles carried by U.S. soldiers into battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nearly three years later — despite the military’s assertion that is making “good progress” — the code remains on many rifles deploying to Afghanistan, which some soldiers argue is endangering their lives by reinforcing suspicions that the United States is waging a crusade against Muslims.

“I honestly believe that this is a dangerous situation. It literally could be a matter of life and death for a soldier if he fell into the wrong hands,” said an Army officer who spoke to NBC News from Fort Hood, Texas. “The fact that combatant commanders are not following (rules set by Department of Defense) commanders is very disturbing to me.”

The officer, who asked not to be named out of fear of reprisal from commanders, provided a photograph, taken on Tuesday, of the code on an M-4 rifle assigned to a soldier who is slated to deploy to Afghanistan in coming weeks.

The code stamped into the metal of the soldier’s ACOG (Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight) ends with the model number with “JN8:12.” which refers to the New Testament passage, John 8:12, which reads: “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

Other rifle scopes among some 250,000 provided by Michigan-based manufacturer Trijicon were imprinted with codes that point to passages in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Corinthians and Revelation, ABC News reported when it broke the news in 2010.

Trijicon, reportedly had been following this practice for at least two decades, and it was well known to gun enthusiasts.

Like my son said to me, “The dude who is worried about this needs to find something else to do with his life.”

Yea, I’ve got a feeling he is about to get something else to do.  Either he will be a fobbit and never leave the comfort of Hesco barriers, working PowerPoint slides all his deployment (in which case the Pashto- or Dari-speaking Afghans won’t ever get to read his English ACOG and he gets to worry over the question, “Daddy, what did you do during the war?”), or he will be outside the wire, in which case, if this is the kind of thing he is worried about, he will get his ass shot off.

Either way, I’ve said before that I will take a Biblical ACOG any day.  Calling Trijicon?  A free ACOG, please?  I’ll take as much Scripture as you can fit on it.

Prior: About Those Biblical ACOG Sights

“So I can hear it now – the First Sergeant says, ‘Okay.  Instead of practicing room clearing exercises, today and tomorrow we have a work party at the armory to remove certain inscriptions on your ACOGs.’  Rather than training to do your job and save your life, you spend your time making somebody happy who has nothing to do with any of this.  The dude who is worried about this needs to find something else to do with his life”  –  A certain Marine

“I foresee ACLU involvement.

I also can foresee the Troops being told to remove the offending ‘codes’ and several filing through the outer casing of their sights causing a subsequent blanket order to cease filing and directing Cdrs to turn all the sights in to DS Maintenance for removal of the offending characters IAW MWO 9-236-10 followed by a GAO audit to determine how much the whole drill cost.

Oh. And the media report of J Troop, 10-73d Cav taking excess casualties due to the lack of optical sights, all having been in Maintenance for over three months, in the big fire fight at Fetterman’s Sangar…

All for something that doesn’t approach, much less pass the ‘so what’ test” – Ken White, Small Wars Council

So by now you are all aware of the Biblical inscriptions on ACOGs sights sold by Trijicon to the U.S. Marines and Army.  Without rehearing the details, the owner of the company who makes the ACOGs sights for the U.S. Marines is a Christian, and he has found a unique way to take pride in his work.  He has tooled his factories to inscribe certain Biblical passages on the ACOGs sights.

General Petraeus is disturbed over the inscriptions.  The U.S. Marine Corps is concerned, and Trijicon has agreed to remove them.  Even the washed up, burned out, pacifist hippies at Creative Loafing have weighed in with indignation over the inscriptions (and Muslims with faux outrage after this was hyped in the American media).  The Huffington Post has their usual knee jerk reaction.  Kits have been distributed to remove the inscriptions from those sights which are currently in service (even though, rather surprisingly, the British Ministry of Defence has refused this remedy because it will remove weapons from the field where they are needed).  They’ve taken a pass.

Now, I would never have included the inscriptions on the sights, but not because I disagree with the inscriptions.  In general, I’m a boring kind of guy and just not creative enough to have come up with the idea.  With General Petraeus, I am “disturbed” about a great many things: that we initiated Operation Iraqi Freedom with fewer troops than necessary to maintain the peace once the regime fell – that we have too few troops now in Afghanistan – that we may be losing our conventional capabilities as we necessarily focus on irregular warfare – that our warriors need an entirely new generation of  weapons that won’t be funded – and so on the list could go.  But “disturbed” over these inscriptions?  Not even nearly.  Generals should worry over things that warrant worry, such as micromanaging the campaign.

As for Trijicon, they have behaved admirably throughout this silly ordeal.  If it had been me, I would have let the Marine Corps explain to parents and spouses of Marines why they rejected the best optical sights on the planet because someone who wasn’t involved in this objected to my world view.  I would have responded, ‘Oh, go blow it out your …..,”  well, never mind, that wouldn’t be very Christian.